St. Teresa of Avila

SURRENDERING OUR WILL TO GOD
From the writing of St Teresa of Ávila 3
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We can promise easily enough to give up our will to someone else, but
when it comes to the test we find it the most difficult thing in the world to do
perfectly. But God knows what each of us is able to bear, and when he finds a
valiant soul he does not hesitate to accomplish his will in that person.
So I want to warn you and make you understand what God’s will is, so that
you may realize with whom you are dealing (as the saying goes) and what the
good Jesus is offering on your behalf to the Father. I want you to make sure you
know what you are giving him when you say, “Your will be done.” You are asking
that God’s will may be done in you; it is this and nothing else you are praying for.
You need not be afraid he will give you wealth or pleasures or great honors or
any earthly good things; his love for you is not so weak as that. He sets a far
greater value on your gift and desires to reward you generously, giving you his
kingdom even in this life.

Would you like to see how he treats people who make this petition without
reserve? Ask his glorious Son, who made it genuinely and resolutely in the
garden. Was not God’s will accomplished in him through the trials, the
sufferings, the insults and the persecutions he sent him until at last his life was
ended on the cross? You see then what God gave to one he loved best of all, and
that shows you what his will is. These things are his gifts in this world, and he
gives them in proportion to his love for us. To those he loves most he gives more,
to those less dear he gives less; his gifts are measured by the courage he sees we
have and the love we bear his Majesty. Fervent love can suffer a great deal for his
sake, while lukewarmness will endure very little. I myself believe that love is the
gauge of the crosses, great or small, that we are able to bear.

So if you have this love, think what you are doing. Do not let the promises
you make to so great a Lord be no more than empty compliments, but brace
yourselves to suffer whatever God wishes. Any other way of surrendering our
will to him is like offering someone a precious stone, entreating him to accept it,
and then holding onto it when he puts out his hand to take it. Such mockery is
not for him who endured so much mockery for us. If for no other reason, it
would be wrong to mock him in this way every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. Let
us give him once and for all the precious stone we have offered him so many
times — for he in fact first gave us the thing we now give back to the Father.

3Obras de Santa Teresa, pp. 238-242; reprinted in Meditations on the Sunday Gospels: Year C; introduced and edited by John
E. Rotelle, Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1995, pp. 106-107.